In April 2020, as the pandemic was taking hold of the country and the world, Ohio Rep. Scott Lipps, the Republican who serves as chairman of the Ohio House Health committee, appeared on an anti-vax group’s video conference and promised the group he’d fight for medical freedom.
“I need help with members of the health committee, because we’re going to face a couple huge bills that are gonna matter,” he said. “We’re gonna face a couple bills that this group does not like. And I have to have energy to stop this vaccine shit that’s coming.”
Again, that’s the chair of the health committee.
Months later, a reporter for AJ+ asked Lipps about the remark, curious if his views had changed, if the arrival of Covid vaccines had shifted his thinking, if he believed groups like Ohio Medical Freedom represented the beliefs of the majority of Ohioans.
His views, it turns out, have not evolved much.
“I meant that, until we have proper studies and understand what we’re putting in our bodies, we have to slow it down,” Lipps said in the interview. “Slow it down is a better term.”
“What about the other 400 or 500 calls or Zooms I did,” Lipps pivoted. “You wanna talk about those too or you wanna talk about your personal agenda, because you’re slanting the story.”
Then he declared the interview over and stormed away.
Lipps is just part of the 12-minute segment AJ+ recently did on Ohio, which it called one of the country’s most anti-vax states. It traces the strong toeholds anti-vax/”medical freedom” groups have gotten into the Ohio statehouse, thanks to Lipps, Nino Vitale (who gave an interview last year where he wondered aloud whether Bill Gates was behind the pandemic) and others, and contrasts those with nursing home residents desperate to receive the vaccine.
Enjoy. OH-IO!
This article appears in Jan 27 – Feb 9, 2021.
